


All The Things That Could Have Been, And Maybe Some That Were

by rinskiroo



Series: A Forgotten Star [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, F/M, Fluff, Foreshadowing, Gen, JEDI AU, Leia is not amused, Mild Smut, Misdirection, Padawan Poe, Poe never gets his way, Silly, Snap/Karé sort of, Zombies, but it gets better, character death that doesn't get better, come for the prompts, dumb, just a man and his xwing, mother/son feels, prompts, stay for the gifs in the comments, unhappy ranch dad Poe, unless he does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 13:00:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 11,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9550244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinskiroo/pseuds/rinskiroo
Summary: A collection of prompts based on "Lost Valor; Forgotten Stars." There are some humorous ones, angsty ones, ones that hint at what's to come in the sequel, as well as some Poe and space family focused vignettes.





	1. Joy?

**Author's Note:**

> February 1st: Joy - 100 words - Let's start off with a dramatic moment: Your characters are celebrating a victorious battle!

The base was under attack.

Detonators were being lobbed.  Blasters were spraying across the flight line, pelting the crates and ships they were trying to hide behind.

“You’ll have to try harder than that!”  Poe Dameron called from his place crouched behind a stack of crates.  He dug around in his pack for another projectile and lobbed it without looking in the direction of his foe.

For a minute, the air hung quiet.  Poe took the chance and peaked out over the top of his cover.  There was a lone body splayed out on the permacreet.  Beyond, behind another stack of obstacles, he could barely make out a couple of the dark heads of his enemies.  He watched the body, but still she didn’t move.  She was under the wing of one of the fighters; if he stayed low, he could make it without giving up too much of an opening.

He briefly wondered if she was actually hurt.

With a grunt of frustration, Poe darted from his place of hiding, ducking and weaving behind the myriad of makeshift barriers.  They fired at him, but he tossed a few readied grenades in their direction and none of the shots hit their mark.  His trousers tore as he slid in behind the landing struts.  He grabbed hold of her vest and dragged her limp body back behind the cover with him.

“Hey, you good?”  he asked, giving her a quick glance over.  There are no marks on her clothes and despite the carnage around them, she appeared clean and dry.  “Euli?”  he said her name and shook her, now actually worried.

It wasn’t until he was crouched over her, trying to find a pulse, when he felt the steady stream of liquid against his chest and saw the pistol he had failed to notice before.

“You’re dead,”  she declared, smiling up at him.  Then she yelled across the battlefield,  “I got him!  I got him!”

Poe frowned as his undefeated reign came to an end.  Across the way, Snap and Jess came out from behind where they were hiding and started clapping and cheering.  Other hollers and hisses followed.

“I thought you were on my team!”

She shrugged,  “They had the moral high ground: regime change.”

Poe snorted as he stood.  He pulled open his pack and dumped what remained of his water-filled grenades onto her, laughing as they burst against the permacreet.  Even as she put her hands up and squirmed in the cold puddles now surrounding her, Euli laughed.

Poe Dameron: Master champion of Resistance water sports; now, a fallen despot.


	2. Blush?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 2nd: Blush - 200 words - Sparkling eyes peek through the door. Character blushes at the attention. And then...?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given the theme, "Love and War," I figured these prompts would eventually lead in a sexual direction necessitating a ratings bump. Did not think it would be on the second day...

Stumbling were the feet.  Groping were the hands.  Did he hit the lights when he hastily slapped the door control?  Or had her back hit it as he pushed her up against the wall?  

First the shirts, then the trousers; belts, shoes, all the accessories shed and scattered.

She preferred the lights.  She wanted to watch his body as he moved over her.  Every fold of skin and stretch of muscle, she wanted to study it, devour it.  The way he stopped the tour his lips were taking and looked at her, the hunting gaze in his dark eyes and that smug grin, he was going to enjoy the show just as much.

He kept watching her, as his lips dragged back down across her chest; the coarse hairs on his face tickling the sensitive skin of her breasts.  His fingers dug into her hips as she rocked impatiently against him.

“Poe…”  Those hungry looks, the way he pressed against her, and just the view of him, elicited that wanton moan of his name.

And he smiled, that satisfied smirk.  His movements became tortuously lazy.  Every hitch of her leg and encouraging arch of her hips was met with firm resistance.  Hands, eager to spur him along, were pressed back into the mattress.

His name left her lips again, this time in an almost growl, wanting, demanding.

It was near infuriating the way it excited him to build her need and then leave her begging.  His lips trailed back upwards, nipping across her neck and jaw.  She tried to catch those tormenting lips with her teeth, but he pulled away.  His eyes, now just as needy, watched her annoyed expression twist into pleasure as he pressed himself against the the slick entrance to her body.

He hummed contentedly at her pleading moans, sinking slowly, bit by bit, into her.

He murmured something indiscernible, probably some cheeky remark, but she wanted to steal away his arrogance.  While his hands were occupied holding him upright, trying to maintain his wickedly slow pace, her knee hooked over his hip.  She met each dip of his cock with a brief thrust of her hips, and was rewarded with a grunt as he dragged his lower lip between his teeth; his eyes drifting shut.

“I never get my way,”  his voice rumbled in his chest as he pressed his body against hers.  His lips found hers as his pace quickened, pushing further and further.

At any other time, she would have have rolled her eyes at him.  As if this wasn’t _exactly_ the way he had wanted it: her begging and moaning and bucking underneath him.

Again she said his name, this time in a gasping cry as he drove her to the edge.  Legs and arms clutched around him.  Only a few more purposeful thrusts and she was gone.  He eked every ounce of pleasure from her quaking muscles, until her still rocking hips pulled him with her, until they were both a mass of tangled, twitching limbs.

Flushed.

Sated.


	3. Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 3rd: Fear - 100 words - Our heroes receive a warning about the enemy's latest battle plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> During the planning of the attack on Starkiller Base. A hint of things to come in a sequel...

In the glow of the computer consoles and the mesh of voices talking around him, Poe pushed away the blistering memories to the edge of his consciousness.  Days had passed, and yet he still felt the wound from that violent invasion into his mind.

Once his gathered peers had settled, Poe delivered the summary of Snap’s report.  There was shock at the display; hushed, fearful whispers of their enemy’s super weapon.  Han Solo was as cocky as ever; cocky the way Poe usually was, should have been.

When the General delivered the news that the weapon was being charged and that D’Qar was their target, Poe’s stomach dropped.  The First Order may have never gotten the map.  Finn and Rey and BB-8 together had seen to that.  But the First Order never would have chased after them if… And D’Qar never would have been in their sights if…

If he hadn’t been weak.  If he hadn’t loved.  If it hadn’t been for _her_...


	4. Wistful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 5th: Wistful - 100 words - What could have been? Oh, if only they were here now!

She thought of him often.  Anytime there was the hum of starfighter engines overhead, or a small HoloNet blurb on the controversial Resistance.  Once she had come across a recruitment projection with Poe Dameron declaring “[I Want You!  Join The Resistance](https://dakrolak.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/tumblr_o230jdhpu21v2w3lfo1_r1_1280.jpg?w=1400)” which had stirred her insides in a way that only he could.

He tried not to think of her.  He put her precious memories into a corner of his mind and focused on his mission.  As his X-Wing settled down on the sands of Jakku and he began walking towards the town, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jacket.  His fingers found the long forgotten object: the tiny orange helmet, the party favor she had bought for him on Yavin.  His fingers curled around it for just a second, recalling the smile on her face, and then let it go; his focus returning to the mission.

She tried not to think of him.  She didn’t want the image of him swirling in her mind with the dark thoughts.  Blasters weren’t that messy.  The blood on her hands was metaphorical, but it was still there.  Any city, even the jewel of the new Capital, had the seedier locations, the ones that weren’t in the brochure.  She had found the worst cantina in the worst part of town, ordered the worst bit of booze she could afford and tried not to think of how she had let him down.

He thought about her during the ride on that black shuttle.  A stormtrooper had found the small, plastic toy in his pocket and discarded it into the sand.  He didn’t show that it had meant anything; didn’t want them to question why he would put value on such an item.  Outward he kept his brash attitude; inside he held onto the hope that he would find her again.  As he was dragged through the _Finalizer’s_ hangar, he gaped at the enormity of it; at the rows upon rows of TIE fighters and the perfectly marching lines of stormtroopers.  His hope frayed and he tried not to think that he had let her down.


	5. Bickering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 6th: Bickering - 200 words - What says love more than a heaping helping of belligerent sexual tension?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That built-from-scratch speeder competition I offhandedly mentioned back in [Chapter 11](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8689894/chapters/20073346)? I guess this is it?

“The thrust initiator is backwards!”

“You just have to loosen the bolt and then it rotates!”

Poe threw his hands up into the air and turned his back to the hunk of metallic debris that was supposed to be a speeder.  Euli kept prattling on about turning radius and he started launching into why  _ that wasn’t how it worked _ .

Snap glanced up from where he and Karé were working nearby and shook his head.  The pair of them had been arguing non-stop since the build timer started.  “At least that’s one team we won’t have to worry about,”  Karé commented as she went back to adjusting something on their own half-built speeder.

“The retro repulsors are backwards, too!  What happens when you need to slow down?”

“Why are you braking?”  Euli snapped back at Poe.  “ _ It’s a race! _ ”

“Do you think we should tell them none of the wiring is even connected?”  Snap asked, his head tilted to the side as he gazed at their very sad machine.

“I don’t think they care.”

Snap cocked an eyebrow at Karé, but then glanced back to where Poe and Euli had begun shoving each other.  Pushing away from their marked off spot in the hangar, remarks still biting back and forth at each other as they headed off towards….

Snap turned back around sharply and picked up a tool.  When Karé looked over at him and winked, Snap couldn’t help the blush that had started to color his cheeks.  “That’s inappropriate.  What if someone needs an extra charge pack or a bolt gun?”

Karé just snickered.


	6. Bravado?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 4th: Bravado - Super Saturday word count - - pay an escalation cost for each add-on.  
> 400 words - The Characters must act quickly! Out the door, down the road, fearlessly onward, they will meet their enemies on the field of battle!  
> \+ 200 words - Some verbal or physical muscle flexing from the troops.  
> \+ 200 words - An inspiring speech.  
> \+ 200 words - Adventure awaits!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to do something a little different for the Saturday prompt (hence why it's not on Saturday). This is an AU where Poe and Euli are Jedi at the [Conclave on Kessel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Conclave_on_Kessel). It's one of the last gathering of Jedi after the Purge.

“It’s going to be all right, my Padawan,”  Master Euli Avedis told her apprentice softly.  Her fingers just touched his cheek and then moved, tracing down the braid of hair hanging over his shoulder.

Poe Dameron was a Padawan in title only; he should have been, would have been, knighted if it hadn’t been for the betrayal.  He tried to offer his teacher a smile.  Even if he didn’t believe her, they both wanted to embrace the lie for the sake of comfort.  His hand started to reach out to her, to pull her in close, but they both took abrupt steps backwards as a wave of familiar energy pulsed down the corridor towards them.  Though their Order was gone and there were no sanctions that could be levied against them, there was still that guilt over having broken one of its tenets.

“Master Avedis, it is good to see that you and your Padawan survived,”  Master Koffi Arana said as he approached the pair.  He was a dark-skinned, middle-aged human; his brown robes showing signs of having been burned by blaster fire, though he appeared to be in good health.  “That makes it a clean dozen so far.  The others are waiting further in.”

Poe and Euli exchanged a frowning look.  It was a sad state if only twelve Jedi had made it to the rendezvous on Kessel.  Master Shadday Potkin had called for the Conclave to rally what remained of the Jedi; to try and fight back against the monster that had culled their numbers.  Master Arana led them through the abandoned mine, a surprisingly large space considering.  Both Master and Apprentice noticed, however, that most passageways had already been cordoned off and make-shift barricades erected.  There was no doubt they were preparing for, and expecting, a fight.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,”  Poe grumbled under his breath.

Master Arana just cocked an eyebrow at the young man as he glanced back.  “I’m sure you two will like what Master Potkin has to say.”

Poe watched as Euli’s expression twisted into a scowl, though he wasn’t sure if she was irritated because she rarely liked anything Master Potkin had to say, or that their secret affair had not been so secret.

The words of Master Potkin could be heard echoing down the hall, off the hard rock of the old spice mine.  She was trying to rally the support of those she had gathered, convince them of the path she had chosen.  “However powerful, Vader is  _ one _ , and we are  _ many. _ ”*

Poe could feel the anger, and even the hate, radiating through the room.  Most of those gathered were Knights and Masters, only he and one other were still Padawans.  All that they had been taught about the Code and harnessing one's emotions seemed to have disappeared as well in the Purge.  Their leader, the human woman with the crown of dark hair wearing green vestments, Master Shadday Potkin, felt particularly unhinged.  Her grief was practically a solid mass he could reach out and touch.  She had spoke of the mysterious creature, Vader.  Poe had not heard much about him, other than rumors that he was Palpatine’s chief Jedi hunter.

“What is with this Vader?  Why is he so intent on killing us?”  The Padawan’s question was met with uncomfortable glances from the Masters.  When he looked to his own, Euli just shook her head at him.  It seemed it was the wrong question to ask.

“Are you afraid, Padawan?”  The look that Master Potkin gave him was withering.

Rather than shrink back into his robes, Poe stood up straighter and pushed his shoulders back.  “Of course not.  I’d just like to know my enemy.”  His hand just brushed against the cylinder at his hip.  “Any advantage in the battle ahead.”

That drew a satisfied smirk from Master Potkin as well as grins and nods of approval from the other Jedi.  Euli continued to look apprehensive about the entire situation.

“We shouldn’t be so quick to seek him out, Shadday,”  Euli said, her hands folding into her own battle-torn robes.  “We should find others and gather our strength.  Discover where he’s weakest.”

But Master Potkin just sneered at the suggestion.  “No more debate.  No more  _ reflection. _  No need of planning.  Our prey comes to us.”  There were gasps in the group as she finally revealed the crux of her plan.  “When he is dead, the Emperor will be crippled and know  _ fear. _  And the galaxy will know the Jedi  _ live. _ ”*

The typically even-tempered Jedi erupted into shouting, most trying to stress the need for rational thinking in this tumultuous time.  Poe realized the palpable feeling he had felt from Master Potkin wasn’t grief--she was drenched in bloodlust.  Even Master Arana had the audacity to suggest using the dark side to aid them.  With the fall of their Order, they had gone mad.

Though often brash and strong in her own right, Euli found her way back to Poe’s side and shrunk next to him, suddenly looking small in her dirty, tan robes.  The institutions that had propped them up were all gone now and each were grieving and dealing with it in their own way.  Her hand found his; cold fingers curling around tightly, seeking warmth and support.  “I can’t give up what we believed so easily.”

His hand squeezed hers, responding quietly,  “We’re still Jedi.  And if Vader comes here, we’ll fight him.  It won’t be revenge the way Shadday wants; it will be because stopping him is the right thing to do, for the whole galaxy.”

The monster’s metallic voice could be heard bellowing through the chamber.  Vader was screaming for Obi-Wan Kenobi.  In return, Master Potkin taunted the Sith lord, monologuing about the trap she had set for him.  Vader offered not to kill whoever came forth with Master Kenobi’s location, but the other Jedi refused and set upon him with ignited sabers.  Behind the fearsome, black-armored creature swarmed the white troopers, firing their blasters.

A blade of cobalt erupted from the cylinder in Poe’s hand and next to him, Euli had one of orange.  While many of the other Jedi rushed Vader, Master and Padawan hung back and tried to manage the onslaught of troopers.  They deflected the bolts from the blasters, protecting each other.  The carnage was unceasing and bodies began to pile up; mostly those of the troopers who were the fodder of the battle, but there were a few of their Jedi peers that had been cut down.

For a time, it seemed the Jedi had the upper hand on the Sith.  He had lost limbs and was howling in pain, but still he manipulated the Force as his weapon against in his enemies.  The pain, it seemed, had made him stronger, more formidable.  And then, Master Arana, consumed by his rage, turned on young Knight Swan whose only crime was offering a crippled Vader the chance to surrender.

Euli, distracted by the murder of the kind Jedi, took two blasts center mass.  Poe grunted and nearly cried out, feeling her pain and her fear, and the life quickly fading away.  He deflected several more bolts and watched as Vader lifted a shard of metal and impaled Master Arana.  There were fewer targets now.  A bolt caught Poe in the shoulder and then the leg, sending him to the ground.  Wincing through the pain, he pushed himself across the floor towards his fallen Master, his forbidden love.

He laid practically on top of her; hands on her face as he listened to her last, rasping breaths.  “The Force is with you, Poe.”

For a second, he doubted.  Doubted that any of them truly understood the nature of the Force or their place in it.  Her light had gone out.  Her thread cut.  And his soon followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *These are lines from the Legends comic "Star Wars: Purge."


	7. Thrill/Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 7th: Thrill - 100 words - Escape scene!

“That’s a little high,”  Poe commented as he craned his neck back and forth after Euli had zipped his flight suit all the way to the chin.

An eyebrow quirked up at him.  “Should I take it off and try again?”

For a second, he considered the offer, but decided they’d disappeared for too long already, and that it was a damn miracle nobody had come along wondering why the supply closet was locked, again.  He pushed the door open just a crack and peeked outside.  “Coast is clear.  You want to head out first, or…?”

She was just standing there shaking her head at him, wearing a look that told him she was happy to continue letting him live in the delusion that they had been covert.

“Hey, did you get that fusion cutter I asked for?”  Snap called over to Poe as he made his way back across the hangar.

Poe just paused to turn and blink at his friend, blanking on the request.

“I asked you five minutes ago to bring me one out.”

“Sorry, buddy, must have not heard you through the thick walls.”

Karé snickered again.  “Not that thick, Commander.”


	8. Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 8th: Need - 300 words - When your character needs them, they are there.

As a boy, his needs were simple: his parents, a flat rock to skip across the water, the toy blaster to pretend he was a Pathfinder like Pop, and Mom’s A-Wing.  The ship was not a toy, and flying in it was not pretend.  Shara taught him to respect the machine, and that flying it was a promise.

When his mother died, his needs changed.  Rocks weren’t skipped, they were thrown.  The toy blaster went into a crate in the attic.  He needed his mother, but she wasn’t there.  His father tried to be there, but Poe just needed him to go away.  He still needed that A-Wing; still needed to fly.  He wasn’t supposed to take it out on his own, but he did it anyway.  Pop took the starter fuses out, which only stopped him for a few months until he’d saved up enough allowance and bought and installed a new set.

The Academy was the fresh start he needed.  University was always touted as a place to reinvent oneself, but to Poe it was the place he became the person he had always been.  Back home, he saw himself as the kid from the ranch outside town, but there were people he never remembered meeting who knew who he was and told him about the great things they expected from him.  For awhile, it felt odd to have logged more flight hours than even some of the instructors, but he quickly became comfortable in his position at the top of the class.  Poe discovered he needed to lead; needed to be the one in charge, the one taking responsibility for the team.

It wasn’t long before he realized the Republic didn’t need him.  Poe needed to fly, but more than that, he needed to fly with purpose.

His needs changed again in the belly of a derelict Corellian freighter when she fell into his arms.

 

 

As a girl, her needs were many.  She needed her family, all of them, her parents, brothers, grandparents, and so many aunts, uncles, and cousins sometimes it was hard remembering all their names.  She needed her dolls, her tea sets, her stacks of datapads full of novels and holozines and music, and all the other trappings of a spoiled youngest daughter living on a beautiful, peaceful planet.  At ten, she got the older sister she never knew she needed.

As she grew, her needs didn’t change much, just expanded to include more things that would later be considered frivolous and shallow.  In a galaxy gone mad, her life was unequivocally ordinary.  It was a need she didn’t even realize she had.

When she left Alderaan for Coruscant, there was the need for independence.  The entire galaxy was laid out before her and all she had to do was seize it.  Euli saw herself in a much larger light than the Capital did, all arrogance and sass and convinced of her stake in the galaxy.  In the crush of the Imperial Center, a black and grey world of stifling uniformity and masked desires, she needed to be small and unnoticed.

In the aftermath, there was a driving need for vengeance.  There was the need to stay alive, to fight, to protect the people around her.

When she saw him for the second time, she found something else she hadn’t realized she needed.

  
  


There was a brief flash of time where their needs intersected.  For that moment, her needs became his and she put his needs ahead of her own.  They needed each other; needed the support, the companionship, the mirth, the love.  He needed her fingers clutching onto him and she needed to be wrapped in those arms, huddled against the storm.  For just a breath, they resisted the need to change.


	9. Everywhere/Messy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 9th: Everywhere - 100 words - This battle was a little bit... extra messy.

“That’s… that’s disgusting,”  General Organa stated as canopy after canopy of the fighters of Black Squadron lifted and their pilots disembarked.  They were all covered in some sort of sloppy goop.  It was a runny, muddy mixture of yellow and brown sludge and so  _ foul _ .

Standing next to the General, Euli lifted her hand to her cover her mouth and nose as the smell of rotting garbage, or maybe some decomposing tauntaun, filled the space.

“Didn’t think to at least hose off before you got into my X-Wings, Dameron?”

The pilot shrugged at the General’s question, seemingly unphased by the absolute mess his squadron was in.  “Wasn’t time.  And  _ your _ X-Wings?”  Poe grinned that cheeky, shit-eating smile, which would have been endearing if he hadn’t been covered in literal shit.

“Yes,  _ Commander.  My _ X-Wings,”  General Organa responded, her arms crossed over her chest, clearly not amused.  With a shake of her head, she turned and began walking away, her hand waving in front of her face to try and keep the smells at bay.  “Clean it up.   _ Quickly. _ ”

“Uh-uh.”  Euli took a step back away from Poe as his attention turned towards her, his smile still persisting.

“What?  It was just a little swim in the stinking mires of Krevas.  I hear it’s good for the complexion.”


	10. Tactics?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 10th: Tactics - 100 words - A coordinated strike on the enemy.

“See, who needs a droid?”  A large smile showing off brilliant white teeth spread across Bastian’s face as the mechanism clicked.  The ancient door groaned on its tracks as it slid slowly open.

Though her companion was in good spirits and pleased with himself, Euli stood with her small scout pistol gripped in her fingers looking apprehensive.  She didn’t tell him about the bad feeling she had felt, gripping at her insides.  By this point in their partnership, bad feelings were easily implied.  Both unhooked torches from their belts and turned them on; Bastian kept his blaster in his holster, for now.

The massive ziggurat was ancient in any measure of time.  One side had already succumbed to war, or natural disaster, or simply decay; its pillars had toppled and levels were caved in on each other.  The smells once they were inside were a mix of stale, unmoving air and rot.  A curious smell as any sort of organic material  _ should _ have long decomposed and turned to dust.  The smell had made Euli oddly hopeful, that perhaps this time they hadn’t been too late.

“What do you think it is this time?”  Bastian asked as they traveled deeper and deeper into the timeworn temple.  “Grave robbers?  Cultists?  Rakghouls?”

They came across what looked to be an archaic medical facility.  There were overturned tables, smashed computer consoles, instruments strewn in every corner, and bones of long forgotten dead.  There were old kolto tanks broken in a strange way--as if something had punched its way out.

“I think this is something entirely different…”  Euli’s words trailed off, a nervous twinge to her voice.  “This was on the  _ Jedi _ temple list, right?”

Not that it had made much difference to either of them which bygone faction the place once belonged to.  The locations thought to be Jedi hideaways that they had so far mapped out, had all been eerily still, not serene, but hauntingly empty.  This one held a darker, more palpable energy.  Nevertheless, they set to work on what they had come to do: map out the area, see if anything was salvageable, and maybe find the next clue.

“Did you hear that?”

“Not funny, Bastian.”

But she heard it, too.  The scraping like claws on stone; the subtle rustling like something creeping through the cavernous corridors; a grunting, moaning sound pinging off the walls.

Bastian swallowed loudly and licked his lips.  “Well, I guess we finally found something.”

Despite the warning in the pit of her stomach, her feet took a few more steps forward.  “Let’s find them before they find us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued...


	11. Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 11th: Sacrifice - Super Saturday word count - - pay an escalation cost for each add-on.  
> 400 words - To escape you must leave one of your own people behind to be captured by the enemy.  
> \+ 200 words - One of the escapees suffers from Heroic BSOD  
> \+ 200 words - Add a heaping helping of Finagle's Law  
> \+ 200 words - Everything ends up like this (burning)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from Feb 10th's prompt.

They were running.

The torchlight hit the ceiling and then the floor, only briefly lighting the path in front of them.  Euli nearly ran into Bastian who had nearly run into the wall of the corner that abruptly appeared in front of them.  They paused, shushing each other’s loud, hurried breathing.

“Think we lost it?”  Bastian wheezed as he leaned up against the wall.  The space around them was quiet.  It seemed they had outpaced it, whatever  _ it _ was.

Euli shook her head, even if he couldn’t see her in the near blackness.  Their torches scanned the ground and the down the halls.  What had started as a curiosity gave way to the dread that had been building since they’d landed on this forsaken planet.  There had been horrible, mad science experiments as they had discovered one disturbing lab after another.  They had been deep in the belly of the temple when they’d encountered the first beast: humanoid, but with missing skin and flesh, sickening and terrifying.  The Force clung darkly to the entire structure, but the creature embodied something else in the darkness:  hunger.

Again they found themselves in another of the blitzed labs, though this one was home to fresher corpses.  Bastian grumbled about unlucky treasure hunters as he walked the perimeter of the room, trying to decide which direction they should go.  They had delved further into the temple than they had intended during the sprint away from the monster.  Euli crouched down near the bodies, shining her light across the mess.

“I think something… ate them.”  Euli grimaced at the gruesome display; chunks of flesh ripped out with jagged edges.  In particular the face looked vigorously chewed on.

“When I told my mother I wanted to star in holovids, this was not the kind I had in mind.”

A dark jolt shot across the floor and hit her fingertips.  “Bastian!  Behind you!”  Euli shouted over to him and jumped to her feet.

Several brilliant flashes joined the dim torchlight as Bastian fired his blaster into the creature.  Blaster fire didn’t seem to harm it, but they had discovered if they could take out its legs from under it, they could slow it down enough to get a decent head start.

“ _ Shit-- _ your left!”  Bastian yelled back.

Two more of the monsters had appeared from another doorway.  One had mechanical parts melded in with the flesh: a robotic leg and arm.  The other had no arms and was missing have of its face-area.  Both shared the humanoid shape of the one that had originally set upon them.  The feeling of hunger permeated the air, along with the rotten, decomposing smell.  Euli yelped in surprise as yet another charged at them, this time from the ceiling, landing with a heavy, wet slap against the stone floor.

“This way!”  Bastian was at a doorway still firing off shots to keep the one trained on him back.  “Come on!  I know the way out!”

“Go!”  she shouted at him, firing off her own shots at the creatures shambling towards her.  “Call for backup!  I’ll draw these ones away and circle back around!”

“That’s a  _ terrible idea!” _  But his voice was already fading down the corridor, trying to stay ahead of the creature.  “A terrible idea!”  His voice reiterated from the comm on her wrist, but then begrudgingly acknowledged he would find his way back out of the temple and to the ship to call for help.

She didn’t have a second to spare to respond.  The monsters had driven her back towards the far exit.  The twisted body of the one that had fallen from the ceiling had propped itself up and crawled, dragging its body with its arms, along with the other two standing upright.  All three slowly shambling towards her, their prey.  Outside the doorway were stairs leading down.  Down was someplace she did not want to go.  Down meant deeper into the temple, farther away from the passages that would lead back outside.

It wasn’t much of a choice.  Down, or have her face eaten by the hungering monsters.

She took the steps two and three at a time, hoping the beasts didn’t lose their already uncertain footing and plummet after her.  Another hallway opened up at the bottom and she kept running, not daring to look behind her.  She could hear the frightful moaning echoing still along with the clomp of her boots on the ground.  She ran until her adrenaline addled brain forgot to remind her to look where she was going and she hit a solid, moist surface going full tilt.

Euli jolted backwards and fell onto her back, gasping as the air shocked from her lungs.  Her right hand still gripped her blaster, but the torch had left her fingers and rolled just out of reach.  The light shifted against the stone floor and crumbling wall.  She lay there, catching her breath and wiping the foul, viscous substance from her face.  The wall let out a startling low growl and in the muted glow of the unhelpful torch, Euli could see it start to shift around.

Instead of a human-shaped figure, this one was tall, large, and though mangled and partially skinless like the others, it had tufts of dark fur still stuck to its slick, exposed flesh.  Wookiee.  Dead, but still moving around, Wookiee.

She scrambled backwards at the same time raising her arm to fire repeatedly at its disfigured face.  It roared a strangled noise; resembling as much a Wookiee roar as the moaning from the others had been human speech.  Its face was burned and blistering from the repeated blaster bolts, but still it lunged forward at her, grabbing her raised arms.

The Wookiee had not lost any of its strength in undeath.  Euli thrashed and kicked against its hold.  The blaster twisted in her hand until the muzzle was pressed against the wrist of the monster and she held the trigger down until it grew hot in her hand.  Even as it seared her skin as it overloaded, she held it down until the flesh burnt away and severed the hand holding her.  She dangled half a meter off the ground, her other arm still in its grip.  It howled again and shook her back and forth like some child’s toy.

Euli resisted the urge to cry and scream and instead tried to relax her shoulder to slip out of his grasp.  The comm unit on her wrist cracked and sparked as it gave way; the sleeve of her jacket tore.  She landed painfully against the ground again, though this time she didn’t stop to catch her breath.  She scurried across the floor and in the only direction she could see:  up the mountain of rubble from the collapsed floors above.

Torch, blaster, comm unit, the part of her jacket still being pulled at by the Wookiee were all forgotten as she pushed herself higher and higher up the rocks.  There could be a way out, maybe, but it was getting dark and darker.  She would pause briefly to listen, but she didn’t stop, just kept going even in darkness she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face.

Her head hit the top, or bottom, of something.  Solid, unmoving.  She tried to slow her breathing and her heart racing loudly in her ears.  The noises were everywhere.  They were above her, shambling across the floor.  There was moaning in the walls and rustling, scratching somewhere down below.  There was no place left to go and if there was, she would never see it.  She made herself as small as she could, tucked up against the crushed stones.  She closed her eyes and pressed her hands up against her ears, trying to block it all out.

  
  


“Do you think this is the reason the First Order uses these?”  Snap asked as he adjusted the straps on the tank harness and hefted the large projector of the D-93 Incinerator.  The Resistance had managed to ‘liberate’ a few from their nemesis faction.

“That’d be nice to think they do something other than raze villages,”  Poe answered dryly as he shrugged on his own flamethrower pack.

Despite the earlier running for his life and the fact that his partner was still somewhere inside the zombie infested ziggurat, Bastian had a huge grin on his face as he primed the weapon in his hands.  “Let’s go get our girl, Commander.  Er, your girl, totally yours.  Sir.”  Bastian quickly corrected himself after the dubious eyebrow raise from Poe.

Poe grinned and gave his Lieutenant a good-natured slap on the shoulder.

  
  


Euli didn’t hear the crackling of her comm, tinny and broken a floor below her echoing in the dark, empty cavern.  The torch had long since lost its charge and gone out.  There had been Bastian’s voice telling her they were coming and Poe’s voice telling her to hold on, but she couldn’t hear them.  Perhaps she should have heard the ruckus they were making: the hiss and sizzle of the flame weapons, the howling and moaning of the undead the fires claimed.  Her hands were still locked over her ears, crushing them into her skull, trying to keep out the constant scraping.

But the claws dragging across metal and stone weren’t coming from around her in the walls of the temple.  It was there the Force--reaching, rasping, hungering.  


  
  


The lights attached to their weapons and armor lit the entire space.  The noise they were making, the harsh glow they brought to the dark temple, were beacons to the hungering mobs.  They kept coming, up through the floor, down from the ceiling, from every door or crack in the walls.  They were strong, but slow, lumbering fools.  And not fireproof.

They found the comm unit, right where the tracker told them it was.  A burnt out torch and fried blaster laid nearby along with shredded bits of fabric.  Poe bent down to the ground, his fingers finding the ripped pieces of her jacket.  “I thought you said she was fine?”

Bastian swallowed, his shoulders slumping as much as they could while holding the heavy pack.  “She was.  Thought for sure she could outrun them.”

Poe’s fingers dipped into the red, tacky puddle.  His eyes moved, finding the next, and the next; the whole trail of them leading out… and up.

Tucked right into a corner, pressed precariously into the space between large slabs of fallen stone, he found her.  Her eyes pinched closed against the brilliance of the light; her hands clamped tightly over her ears.  Poe tried to be soothing, quietly whispering that she was safe and she needed to come with him, but Euli had gone somewhere else.  Her body was there, curled into quiet ball, but her mind was still running from the darkness.  Poe could feel it as well, just as he could feel the pleasant thrums of the tree at his house on Yavin, he could feel the oppressive weight pressing down on his consciousness.  Grasping tendrils, gnashing teeth…

“Yeah, this is not the place to buy a vacation home.  Maybe some place with a few less monsters that want to eat my face.”  


  
  


The ziggurat was already smoldering and smoking even before Black Squadron started its bombing passes over the temple.  They left it in a fiery ruin with a beacon warning others to  _ stay the fuck away because holy shit zombies. _


	12. Arcadian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 12th: Arcadian - 100 words - A break, some down time, a moment of peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came out a little different. First person, Poe's POV, and a bit citrus-y.

I mind it when she disappears.  Secrets away and hides her thoughts.  She thinks that I don’t understand, but she’s vague and unconvincing and doesn’t give me that chance.  Sometimes she looks at me like I’m a child, but that would make what we’re doing very inappropriate.

Sometimes I mind when she pauses mid-stride and her eyes cast the other way.  Her body is still there, holding onto me, but her mind has wandered off.  She doesn’t stop it, I’m not sure if she tries.  I’m not sure if she even realizes that she’s gone.  I prod her with a sarcastic remark and press my fingers into her hips, reminding her where she is… what she was doing.  She looks down at me, flushed and smiling and leans over for a kiss.  There’s a promise in there somewhere.

I don’t mind that sometimes I know she’s using sex to cope.  I feel that desperate need for release, for the following quiet.  I’m happy to give it to her, I tell her over and over.  She’s taken what she wanted and she sends me soaring, arcing across the sky.  I’m glad I found her, glad she let me in.  She sighs in content as she comes down and curls up next to me, leg still draped lazily over mine.  It’s not peace, but it’s close.


	13. Breach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 13th: The Breach - 100 words - [Image](http://imgur.com/zoEDmcV) prompt! XD

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually an excerpt from what little I've written for a sequel. Not sure if it will actually make the cut though.

It was a familiar place, the field of the dead.  She’d like to think she’d grown numb to it.  The way the acrid smells washed over her; the way her boots squelched into the blood-soaked ground.  She would have liked to say, that after all this time, it held little control over her emotions.

She would by lying.

Sometimes the dream was cruel enough to put faces on the bodies.  Sometimes she saw her father or her sister or any number of long ago colleagues.  Sometimes she saw the faces of those she had grown close to during her time on D’Qar:  Jess, Snap, Bastian… the Princess.  This was such a time when her subconscious had decided to be vicious with her heart.  Her eyes caught the easily recognizable black and red helmet, except it had been cracked and nearly split in two.  The paste of dirt and blood sucked on her boots as she tried to run, making her legs heavy and her steps slow.

She fell to the ground next to him, red mud staining legs and where it had splashed onto her clothes.  Tears in her eyes, she pushed the body next to him away and nearly ripped the helmet from his head.  Shaking hands shook him fiercely and rubbed at his chest, begging him to wake up.  Begging for forgiveness.

Over and over she apologized to his corpse.


	14. True Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 14th: True Love - 300 words - Your character's love for a person/thing knows no bounds. It is purer than a mountain stream and more beautiful than a supernova.

The man’s in love.  There’d been others in his past, but none like her.  She saw him through the worst of it, and brought him out on the other side.  He owes her his life ten times over.  He smiles when he sees her, shining in the sun.  He can’t help putting his hands on her.  It brings an extra beat to his heart and a flutter in his gut with every rock and roll she gives him.

She’s perfection.  Not as fast as a younger one and she’s lost that fresh glow of youth, but she’s stubborn and steadfast.  She’s a protector and a fighter; aggressive and nimble.  There’s nothing Poe trusts more.  He guides her, but responds to what she tells him.  He knows every centimeter of her; deft fingers knowing just where to press to get the response he desires.  She hums, no screaming or groaning or whining, he takes care of her, makes her purr.

There’s never been one like her, and he’s named her as such.

_ Black One. _


	15. Foldable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 15th: Foldable - 100 words - No one's battlegear would be complete without a nifty weapon!
> 
> (Honestly, I just pick one word or image out of the prompt that inspires me. #rulebreaker)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pre-Yavin Euli where she still doesn't remember and trudging around on crutches.

It happened every time her eyes caught sight of the orange-red fabric. The flutter in her gut, the quickening of her pulse; somewhere in the corner of her subconscious was a voice screaming at her to wake up.

Euli felt like she was violating some sacred code, standing in the staging room staring at the line of cubbies each with a fresh uniform and stark white flak vest hanging in them.  A length of grey tubing curled on the floor of the doorless lockers, attached to the small regulator box hanging from a hook on the side.  On the opposite side were belts, grey-black with tarnished, silver buckles.

Her fingers curled around the worn handholds of her crutches.  Her tongue felt dry and heavy in her mouth and she wasn't sure if it was the guilt and nervousness for being in a room she didn't belong, or that it felt so hauntingly familiar.  And suddenly it was the rage again, building up in her chest.  Instead of the sort of anxious reverence she had for these uniforms, she hated them.  She wanted to rip them from their perfect little stages and tear them to shreds, curse them for… what?

Her eyes blinked, fighting back the anger and the unspent tears.  It was just a uniform that held no real meaning for her except the way it fit on a certain pilot.  She wondered if he had heard her thoughts because his voice startled her from the door behind her.

“Hey, you looking for me?”

Euli took a quick breath before turning around and carefully maneuvered feet and crutches towards Poe.  “Of course, what else would I be doing in here?”

He cocked an eyebrow slightly at her annoyed tone.  “I bet I can find one in your size.”

She scoffed.  “That color is hideous. I wouldn't be caught dead in it.”


	16. KO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 17th: KO - 100 words - A character gets knocked out by the enemy and wakes to one of their comrades looking at them like [this](http://i.imgur.com/7uXXHDo.jpg).

Sun and stars and trees and grass and a gas giant hanging on the horizon were the random images that flooded Poe's mind. Lazy strolls through wading brooks and a starfighter rolling through the clouds joined the pleasant scene.

If there was some peaceful afterlife in the Force, this was probably it.  Except for the thumping pain in his head and the incessant, shrill beeping.

When Poe opened his eyes, there was a collection of faces above him, all bug-eyed with shock and concern. And then there was his droid, practically quaking with his sad, binary apologies.

“Beebee-ate says he got stuck in the X-Wing’s droid mount and you tried to help, but he fell on your head,”  Snap explained, but he didn't move.  None of the other gaping pilots made a move to help him up or give him any space.

In fact, Bastian pulled out a small data recorder and chuckled as he snapped a photo.  “You've got this adorable cog-work imprint on your face, Commander,”  the Lieutenant told him.

Poe sighed and closed his eyes again.  “Everyone's demoted.  I quit.  Beebee-ate's now Commander of Black Squadron.”


	17. Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 16th: Better - 200 words - Together we can defeat the enemy! Some of us can do that better than others, though.

“Green Four to base, ready to take off!”

“You’re not Green Four, I’m Green Four,”  Shara corrected as she pulled the boy back into her lap and finished adjusting the safety straps.  “And you have to finish pre-checks before you tell flight control you’re ready.”

“What am I then?”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Black!”  the boy exclaimed, his hands clapping together.  “Black One!”

Shara chuckled and pulled on the strap on his helmet, making sure it was nice and tight on his little head.  “One isn’t a call sign.  It’s Black  _ Leader _ .”  She guided his hands across the controls, showed him the engine diagnostic, tested the flap controls, all the other things before nodding that they were nearly ready for take off.

The boy took a breath and licked his lips.  “Black Leader to Yavin control, we are ready to launch!”

There was a stifled laugh on the other side of the comm before the response,  “Roger that, Black Leader.  Clear for launch.”

“Okay, gently now.  Keep her even.”  Shara’s hand wrapped around her son’s on the flightstick.  She showed him the stabilizers, but his fingers weren’t quite dexterous enough yet to control all four.  It was a little bumpy, that first pull upward, but Shara was patient and Poe was determined.  “Pull left… now right… good job!”

“Can we roll?!”

Shara grinned, but gave a slight shake of her head.  “Not today.  Got to make sure you get your space legs before we try any acrobatics.”

“I’m not gonna barf, Mama.”

“Oh, I believe you, but let’s go see the stars.”


	18. Infiltrate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 20th: Infiltrate - 200 words - [Image prompt.](http://imgur.com/VGJDfwE)

Whenever Commander Dameron came back from a trip to Yavin IV, the news spread like wildfire across the D’Qar base.  While the mess hall kept a decently stocked pantry and personnel didn’t always have to rely on rations, the koyo fruits from the Dameron ranch were a legendary commodity.

And damn was Poe a stingy bastard when it came to food from home.

Snap Wexley was the first to drag his attention away.  Some urgent squadron business that needed his immediate input.  Next, it was Gris going on about droid maintenance and thrust actuators.  Then, Jess had a question about atmospheric pushback and something else; Poe’s eyes had started to glaze over after the long fight and the endless questions.

When he reached into the storage compartment for the sacks of produce, he was only slightly surprised to find them empty.  Every time he told himself to be more vigilant, or at least lock the compartment.  There was a beeping behind him and he turned, smiling at the round droid and the present BB-8 had for him.

“Find that one off the back of a speeder?”  Poe chuckled and took the fuzzy, pink fruit from the droid’s little claw.  He gave the droid a pat on his dome and answered the series of questioning beeps.  “I like to let them think they’re pulling one over on me, make ‘em think they owe me one.”


	19. Picture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 21st: Picture - 100 words - One of your characters carries a picture in their pocket. Someone sees it.

Poe was whistling as he closed up the control panel to the navicomputer.  This old freighter was a miracle of the Force for how well it held up.  One last diagnostic to be run and he’d feel slightly better about his girl taking it back out again.  He moved through the ship, double checking different consoles until he passed by the crew berth.  He paused, turned, and walked past again.

Poe swallowed and then called out,  “Euli!  What’s this doing in here!”

“What?”  Euli poked her head into the room, let out an embarrassed chuckle, and then ducked back out.  “I thought you knew about that recruitment poster.”

“Yeah, I knew about the one  _ where I had clothes on. _ ”


	20. Unwavering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 22nd: Unwavering - 300 words - Why do we fight? We fight to protect them. They may be different people to each of us, but without them we wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be doing these horrible things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In canon, in direct violation of orders he was given, Commander Poe Dameron seeks out the secret fleet of the First Order. When he returns, he expects to be arrested and is instead recruited into the Resistance by General Organa. What if the Resistance had been operating in secret and not so closely with the Republic military?

“Commander Poe Dameron,”  the Admiral started.  Several chairs squeaked backwards across the floor as bodies got to their feet.  Once the rustling of chairs and people adjusting their clothing ceased, the Admiral continued.  “This forum finds you in violation of Republic Navy’s UCMJ.  We confirm the charges of insubordination, mishandling of classified information, and conduct unbecoming an officer of the New Republic military.  You are hereby discharged from active service.  Is there anything else you wish to add?”

Poe stood in his black and white service uniform, hands clenched at his side, his face wearing a look of disappointment, but not surprise at the judgement.  He had said his piece time and again, in reports and statements and in testimony.  And he would say it again until they listened, until _someone_ listened.  “The Republic can’t let the First Order’s aggression go unchecked.”  A gavel banged, warning him to be silent even though they had given him the floor.  “They have _Star Destroyers_!  You’re all happy to sit in ignorance!”

The man standing next to him wrapped a hand around his arm, warning him that he was about to go too far.  Behind Poe, his father too was telling him to calm down before they added prison time, something he had been lucky to avoid.

“This court martial is adjourned,”  the Admiral announced, rising to his feet.  “Go with the Force, Mr. Dameron.”  


 

It had only been a few days, but Poe felt he couldn’t leave the stink of the Capital behind him fast enough.  They’d taken everything: his bars, his wings, his droid, but not his drive, not yet.  His father wanted him to come home, recalibrate his new life, but Poe wasn’t ready for that.  Instead, he tapped the counter of the bar, indicating he needed a refill.

The small, orange proprietor stood on her booster behind the counter and poured the former Commander another drink.  Her large, magnified eyes studied him behind her bulbous spectacles.  “That is a face far too handsome to be so sullen.”

Poe glanced up, his lips quirking slightly.  “Well, I feel better now that you’re here, Maz.”  He took a slow drink of the amber liquid before getting into why he was out here, because no one just came all the way out to Takodana unless they needed something.  “I’m looking for Temmin Wexley, you know him?”

Maz laughed lightly, turning to put the bottle away.  “Snap?  Oh yeah, he’s a handsome one, too.  How is it you pilots are all so attractive?”

“I hear he and Joph Seastriker recruit out of here?”

Maz's demeanor shifted just slightly and she looked back to him with a frown.  “I told them to shove off.  I have a strict no politics policy.”

Despite what sounded like a brush off, Poe looked hopeful that perhaps the rumors he'd heard of a secret resistance were true.  “Where can I find them?”

Maz glanced out over Poe's shoulder at the busy cantina, as if contemplating something, but then shook her head.  “Don’t know.”

“Come on, Maz.  Just tell me where they went!  Anything!”

“Go home, Poe.  Find someone, settle down, have a nice, quiet life.”  


 

Eventually, that’s what Poe did.  He went home to Yavin IV to the open arms of his father and a simple life on the ranch.  For a week each month, he flew with the Yavin Civilian Defense, just like his mother had, and in her A-Wing no less.  In an unguarded and unexpected moment, he had met a woman, an artist visiting the moon to sketch the old temple ruins.  He invited her home, and she never left.  Within a year they were married, and in the next they welcomed a daughter.

His life was quiet and peaceful and safe and entirely unfulfilling.

It had been almost three years since he’d left the Capital.  Poe was standing on the porch trying to pry some small rocks out of his toddler’s hands before she could shove them in her mouth, when a small, grey shuttle descended on the landing pad next to the hangar.  A few people departed: a commando surveying the area, a young woman looking at a datapad, and a short, older woman with neatly braided and pinned grey-brown hair wearing a bluish almost-uniform who was no doubt in charge of their little group.  She was regal, and beautiful.

The woman approached, her two companions staying behind at the shuttle.  She stopped just at the bottom of the steps and gave him a wide, almost motherly, smile.  “I think the last time I saw you, you were about that size.  Do you know who I am?”*

Poe nearly saluted, and if he hadn’t been holding the now squirmy little girl, he probably would have.  “General Organa.”

“We can have this conversation right here or you could invite me in, Poe.  I’m going to call you Poe, if that’s all right.”*

“Uh, yes, of course, General.”  Poe had never felt quite so out of place in his own house, but he turned and opened the door for her and followed her inside.  Hurriedly he picked up the toys occupying the chairs and tossed them into a nearby laundry bin and cleared off some stray dishes still littering the table.  “Sorry, ma’am.  We weren’t expecting company.”

“You should see your expression,”*  she said genially, her smile crinkling the corners of her eyes.

“Well if it isn’t Princess Leia, in the flesh!”  Kes Dameron exclaimed, coming in through the kitchen.

“Sergeant Dameron,”  Leia greeted the older man warmly and they embraced like old friends.  “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m here.”

“I looked for you,”  Poe said suddenly, not giving the General the chance to explain herself.  He hadn’t been in the military for quite some time, and even then he’d gone ahead and said what was on his mind anyway.  “For months until I doubted the Resistance even existed.  That everyone was just going to lay down and let the First Order do what they wanted.”

General Organa looked genuinely sad at his admission, and guilty for having put him through it.  “I know.  You were being watched.  We think they were waiting for us to recruit you.  After awhile, they gave up trying to use you as bait.”  Her eyes drifted over to Poe’s father.  “And then Kes made sure I saw your wedding announcement and I…”

As the General’s words trailed off, Poe glanced up to where she was looking.  His wife had come in from the other room and was standing quietly in the doorway wiping blue paint from her fingers.  She offered him a small smile, painfully aware of what the General’s visit meant.

“I’m sorry,”  the General said, her hands clasping together in front of her.  “You don’t deserve for me to come here and disrupt your happiness--”

“He’s not happy.”

“Sweetheart…”  Poe said with a sigh in response to his wife’s curt interruption.  It was an argument they had had several times over.  It wasn’t as if he didn’t love his father and his wife and his daughter intensely, but there was always something missing. This quiet life, it was never enough for Poe and everyone in this house knew it.  Poe glanced down at the chubby little creature in his arms with his hair and eyebrows and her mother’s sharp, little nose.  How could he leave this behind and fly off into what was certainly war?

He must have been staring at his daughter for longer than he realized, because when he looked up, his wife was suddenly in front of him wearing her own patented look of understanding.  “ _She’s_ asking, Poe.”

Just as Leia Organa had asked Shara Bey all those years ago, she was now asking her son.  To fly out into certain danger, to make the galaxy safer, to give others a better chance.  It must be a dire situation indeed for her to come to him now after all this time.  They were building something, the General told them, something terrible and she needed the best.  Not just the best, but those that had the honor and integrity to do what was right no matter the cost.

He pressed a kiss to his daughter’s head, hoping that one day she would understand his choice, and passed her to her mother.  He turned towards the General, hands on his hips, just the slightest smirk pulling at his lips, and asked,  “Where do I sign up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Some of Leia's dialogue is from "Before the Awakening"
> 
> I think unhappy ranch dad Poe is my spirit animal.


	21. Weapon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 23rd: Weapon - 100 words - The ememy deploys their secret weapon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel stuff. Sorry. (not sorry)

“It’s good to have you back, Commander,”  Snap echoed the sentiments of the rest of the pilots as the squadrons formed up at the edge of Tashtor sector.

“It’s good to be back.  We sure Beebee-ate’s on Takodana?”  Under his helmet, Poe grinned, impressed at how that little droid had managed to get several sectors away from Jakku and still in one piece.

“That’s our intel--”

Snap’s sentence was cut off as the astromech currently in BB-8’s place started beeping frantically and the readouts in front of him became filled with text and warnings.  Something had happened.  Something unbelieveable.  Over the comm several voices expressed their shock and disbelief.  Most screwed up their hardened resolve, but Poe could hear a few stifled sobs.  The entirety of the Hosnian system, all planets and moons, had been destroyed.

Poe’s heart thumped heavily in his chest and he took a long drag of the stale cockpit air.  The last he knew, Euli had been on Hosnian Prime.  That had been days ago, but…  Poe wondered if it mattered.  After what she had done, he never wanted to see her again.  Perhaps it would be better to just think of her as dead.  It wouldn’t be easier, wouldn’t make it hurt any less, but at least he wouldn’t wonder.

Poe shook his head, steeled his resolve.  Only stopping the First Order and getting that map back mattered now.  “Okay, we’re gonna come in on the west side over the water.  Don’t hold back--you know they won't.”


	22. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 24th: Home - 100 words - “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.” - Robert Frost

Crack.  Plop.  Sizzle.  And a second time.  Two yellow yolks rolling across the pan.  Salt.  Pepper.  Little bit of that spicy red sauce.  Mmmm.  Flip.  Flip.  Ding!  Oh, yeah, the beans.

Kes pulled the tray over to his chair and set his plate down.  “Hmm… where is it…”  he grumbled to himself and dug around in the crack of the seat for the holo-projector’s controller.

Workers rioting in the Outer Rim.  Poor sods.

Ooh, Chandrila’s bolo ball team advances!  Good for them, ‘bout time.

Senate refuses to issue statement on First Order attack on Jakku.   _What the fuck._

Kes settled on watching the replay of the sports match and ate his breakfast with a bit more irritation than before.  He had given up some of the best years of his life to fight that war.  Years with his son and wife missed because what the Empire did, that could not be allowed to stand.  It had been a good fight, the _right_ fight.  And they had won, hadn’t they?  Is this what they had won?  A government so terrified of becoming the thing they replaced that they allowed citizens to be terrorized and rival factions to bloom unchecked?

And here he was, living his quiet life in the house he had built for Shara and Poe.  Shara, Force rest her soul, was gone.  Gone far too soon.  And his son?

Kes sighed wearily and stood, taking his now empty plate back to the kitchen, the broadcast still playing on.

Hat… hat… hat…. Where did it…  Ah.

He whistled to himself, placing the nearly lost hat on his head.  He glanced around the cluttered room again, making sure there wasn’t anything else he needed before heading out into the fields.  Oh--turn off the holo-projector.  Nice pass!  Okay, okay, time to go.

There was a rumbling in the air he hadn’t expected and the slight vibration in the floorboards of the familiar sensation of a craft settling down on the landing pad outside.  His heart jumped slightly and he grinned.  Poe was back from his mission already.  Kes wasn’t sure why exactly his son needed to hide his usual ride back home and instead take out some older model X-Wing.  He was sure the boy and his little band of rebels had their reasons, not that they had shared any with this old soldier.  But!  He was back now, he’d probably be hungry.  As Kes walked out of the house, he made a short list of things he thought Poe would want to eat and how he could convince the kid to stay longer than a couple hours.

The light freighter resting next to Poe’s black X-Wing was not what he expected to see.

His heart fell into his stomach.  Something was wrong, horribly, terribly wrong.

He was getting to be an old man and his knees didn’t quite work the same as they used to, but he pushed his legs as fast as they would go across the space between his front door and that freighter.  His fists banged on the closed ramp, demanding entry.  Even as the ramp descended, he climbed aboard as it moved slower than he deemed acceptable.

Poe, his son, his boy, was laying on the floor; his features pale, his face bloody, one of his arms useless at his side.  Kes fell to those old knees beside him.  His hand ghosted across the top of Poe’s head, as if he was afraid to touch him, afraid to break him even further.

“Oh, Shara, I’m not ready.”


	23. Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 25th: Death - Super Saturday word count - - pay an escalation cost for each add-on.  
> 400 words - Today we mourn [character], they died by heroically sacrificing themselves.  
> \+ 200 words - Add a touch of Died in your arms tonight for dramatic tension.  
> \+ 200 words - But I'm not completely evil, so add in a Not so final confession  
> \+ 200 words - Your choice on how to play it: Overly dramatic, Straight up comedy, or We all know this is fake, but don't tell the enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sad.

How is a life measured?  Is it measured in the things that are accomplished?  The accolades that are earned?  Is it measured by the number of people that are left behind to mourn?  Each life touched by the departed sing their own song of the passing.  There are terrors that lived larger than their bodies, whose deeds were horrible and many, whose passings were celebrated.  Is their life measured farther than that of the simple farmer who was loved by the few closest to him and who grieved so heavily?

“I know you’re thinking unhappy thoughts, Kes,”  Shara said, her voice weak yet still humored.  She reached boney fingers up to pat her husband’s hand on her shoulder.  “Let’s try not to mourn my death while I’m still alive.”

“I’m sorry,”  Kes muttered, his fingers barely pressing on her shoulder.  She bruised so easily these days and he didn’t want to cause her any extra pain.  And what pain she must have been in.

She had stopped taking the cocktail of medications prescribed.  They made her tired and confused and somehow even weaker.  Sure the pain was gone, but she couldn’t think well enough to hold a conversation or stay awake enough to enjoy the few days she had left.  That’s what the doctor had said the last time he’d been by: days.  Of course, that had been over a week ago and she was still here.  Weaker, skinnier, exhausted, but still breathing, still smiling.

“Do you need another blanket?”

“No, the sun is coming up.  It’ll be warm enough soon.”

Shara loved the sun.  Loved the grass, the trees, the rivers.  Oh, she loved space and the stars and rolling around asteroids, but she loved solid ground and the fresh air, too.  Kes was glad.  He had taken it upon himself to build this house.  Picked the planet and everything that came with it: the heat, the humidity, the remote location, the history.  He had sprung it on her, along with the news that he was leaving the fight after Endor.  If she had been reluctant or irritated at all his initiative to finally settle down, she didn’t let it show.  Shara was wonderful that way.

“Is Poe up?”

“I’m sure he’ll be up soon.  That ‘Rogue Squadron’ program he likes comes on at 0700.”

“You gotta let him fly, Kes.”

Kes smiled softly.  He crouched slightly next to her chair and cupped her hands into his own, blowing on them to warm them up.  “I don’t think anything is gonna stop that boy from flying.  Least of all his old man.”

Others would measure Shara’s life with her medals, with the missions she ran, the targets she took out, the lives she saved.  Both Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker had asked her personally to fly for them, to fight beside them.  She’d gain leagues just attached to those names.  If a life was measured in accomplishments and accolades, Shara towered above the rest.  Even if she shied away from the praise and kept all those medals tucked away in the attic, the rest of the galaxy would remember her name and the things she had done.

“Papa!”  There was an almost whining cry from the direction of the house.  “I’m _hungry_!”

“Tell him to come over here and watch the sunrise with me.”

Poe was getting too big to climb up in his mother’s lap, but he did it anyway.  And though Shara’s arms were frail and tired, she lifted them and pulled them around her son, her dry lips finding the top of his head.  Next to them, Kes sighed and said he’d go start breakfast, but Shara told him to stay.  Breakfast could wait just a little longer.

“What’s happening today on ‘Rogue Squadron’?”

“They’re going to Hoth.”  His legs dangled off the side of the chair while his head rested on her chest.  His fingers pulled at a string on his pajamas.  Perhaps the boy preferred to be inside actually watching it, but he stayed curled up with his mother.  “They put a E-Wing in.  Rogue Squadron didn’t have E-Wings.”

“Oh, well,”  Shara chuckled lightly, her one hand rubbing across his back.  “That’s very serious.  You should send them a message.”

“I will,”  he huffed.

“You’re going to do amazing things, Poe,”  she told him quietly.  “One day, they’ll call me Poe Dameron’s mom.”

Kes’ hand found her shoulder again.  It wouldn't matter what anyone else thought, Shara measured her life in love.  In the boy in her lap and the man at her side.  In the friends she had made and lost.  In the community she had helped to build.

There was a stillness to the morning.  The wind didn’t blow, the birds didn’t call.  It was if the Force had paused just that moment to call Shara home.


	24. You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 19th: You - 100 words - I like you. No, not you, you! (Who is also you.)

 

“Hey, you got over here fast.  Like what you saw?”  Poe called when he heard the door to his quarters slide open.

“What?  I lost my commpad, have you seen it?”  When she came around the corner, she stopped and cocked her head at him.  “You’re bright red, are you okay?”

“You _lost_ it?”

“Yeah.  Were you….?”

“No!”  He scrambled to keep the commpad away from her, but she snatched it out of his grasp.

Her hand covered her mouth, trying to hold back the greatly amused snickers.  “Pilots and their droids.  I bet there’s stories on the HoloNet about just this sort of thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't send dick picks.


	25. Little

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 26th: Little - 100 words - Sometimes love is doing tiny things for someone that they may never notice.

There isn’t a lot of Euli in the galaxy.  The whole of her inhabits the small package he found her in.  Her family died, her life erased, and her memories fled.  She takes his things to inhabit more of the world, his world.  Drinks out of his caf mugs, sleeps curled around his pillow, his friends become her friends.

Poe inhabits the whole of the galaxy.  He owns his place in it and dares anyone to take it from him.  There are streaks of him from the far reaches of the Outer Rim, trailing through Core, and all down the Hydian Way.  When he comes home, he finds pieces of her, small and scattered.  A jacket left across a chair, a hair pin stuck into the carpet.

One day, he picks up the wrong datapad.  He finds thousands of images.  Everything from a picture of their empty room, a messy bed, a tree, a flower, a half eaten sandwich.  She has a picture of her hand, her foot, some awkward angles of trying to take a picture of her face.  And there are hundreds of a black X-Wing racing across the sky.  It’s barely even visible, but Poe knows what it is.

When Euli finds her datapad, there are new pictures on it.  There’s BB-8 and the other astromechs, images of uniforms, close ups on buckles and insignias, there’s the inside of an S-Foil and a toolbox.  Then there are a series of pictures of the sky and clouds and the ground below; hills, and trees, and the square buildings of the base.  Finally, there’s half a helmet in a cockpit and a lopsided grin.


End file.
